child, my mother taught me to kneel and pray to Usen for strength, health, wisdom andprotection. Sometimes we prayed in silence, sometimes each one prayed aloud; sometimes an aged personprayed for all of us... and to Usen. I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light ofthe sun. I was born where there were no enclosures. In 1874, some 4,000 Apaches were forcibly moved by U.S. authorities to a reservation at San Carlos, a barren wasteland in east-central Arizona. Deprived of traditional tribal rights, short on rations and homesick, they turned to Geronimo and others who led them in the depredations that plunged the region into turmoil and bloodshed. In the early 1870s, Lieutenant Colonel George F. Crook, commander of the Department of Arizona, had succeeded in establishing relative peace in the territory. The management of his successors, however, was disastrous, and spurred by Geronimo, hundreds of Apaches left the reservation to resume their war against the whites. In 1882, Crook was recalled to Arizona to conduct a campaign against the Indians. Geronimo surrendered in January 1884, but took flight from the San Carlos reservation in May 1885, accompanied by 35 men, 8 boys and 101 women. Crook, along with scouts Tom Horn and Mickey Free (the white child Cochise was falsely accused of abducting) set out in pursuit, and 10 months later, on March 27, 1886, Geronimo surrendered at Can de Los Embudos in Sonora, Mexico. Near the border, however, fearing that they would be murdered once they crossed into U.S. territory, ...
